


Jack of Spades, Suicide King

by NonEuclideanCat



Category: Boogieman Buddies, Boogieman Buddies: The Telltale Hunt
Genre: Ashen Romance | Auspistice, Caliginous Romance | Kismesis, College, F/M, Flushed Romance | Matesprits, Guns, M/M, Maiming, Only Obliquely Though, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Polyamory, Self-Hatred, Suicidal Ideation, emotional breakdowns, violence against animals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2019-12-23
Packaged: 2021-02-25 21:46:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 10,808
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21912382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NonEuclideanCat/pseuds/NonEuclideanCat
Summary: After an extremely rough couple of days, James settles in for a sleepless night of something resembling meditation. He doesn't get too far in before one of his new associates comes calling for answers, and a long lonely night is made much less so with some storytelling.-Bridging the night between Sessions 43 and 44 of the Boogieman Buddies podcast, this is a series of short stories primarily focused on Amber and James's relationship, how it came to be and how it got to where it is when we first meet them in the show.
Relationships: Amber Williams ♦️ Daniel Bryant, James Waters ♠️ Amber Williams, James Waters ♣️ Daniel Bryant ♣️ Amber Williams, James Waters ❤️ Daniel Bryant





	1. Thoughts Are At Their Most Dangerous In Quiet Spaces

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know if it counts as fanfiction if you're one of the creators of the original work but here we are. I'd imagine most everyone reading this is coming from the link in the shownotes, but for those of you who aren't: Hello! As my name says, I am NonEuclideanCat, player of Amber and James on the Boogieman Buddies podcast. Our DM, Colin, told me in advance that Session 43 would consist of diving through a comatose Amber's memories and that he wanted me to come up with real versions that he would twist into the versions heard in the show proper. This got me thinking *real* hard about Amber's history, and at some point I got bit by the writing bug and tapped away at my phone for 12 straight hours and this is what resulted.
> 
> This is the first bit of prose I've ever taken to completion, so I apologize for how amateurish it is. I hope y'all enjoy it nonetheless.

It's well past 10 at this point, which means everyone either has already turned in or is getting there. Grahm had tapped out first, citing the health benefits of a full eight hours. He seems like an alright enough guy; you still fully intend on breaking his nose to compensate for the time he shot her. Sylvester had headed up second, and Thomas (you're still going to call him Thomas, because she always did) hadn't been far behind, both as worn out from a day of phone calls and, for the kid, trawling through years of memories, as you and the other two were from fighting for your lives in the hospital. Speaking of, Vinland and Hardtack had shuffled off together not too long ago, the former bidding you a friendly but anxious goodnight and the latter an indecipherable nod and a wave. 

Which left you and your comatose companion. You know she'd be hassling you to get some sleep too, but that just isn't happening. In the 3 days since the email came in you've gotten maybe as many hours of sleep, too hopped up first on anguish, then panic, then rage, and now adrenaline and yet more rage, to settle down enough to sleep for more than 15 minutes at a time. Unfortunately there isn't really anything productive to do until morning, and you aren't so caught up in yourself to think that cruising around Baltimore in the middle of the night looking for a wizard to shred would be an intelligent use of your time. So you do the only thing you can do, what you've done every night since your inbox handed you heartache: take your gun apart and clean it. 

There isn't a real reason to do it, you haven't fired it but once since you bought it. But it's soothing. She had taught you to find it soothing. To, in the moments when you were alone, in the middle of nowhere and quickly getting lost in the worst parts of your own head, lose yourself in the mechanical ritual of unscrewing threads and knocking out pins and scrubbing out carbon and rubbing in solvent and putting it all back together. And lucky you, you have an entire armory two rooms over to work your way through once you finish with your own. 

It's a practiced enough motion by now that you're free to think, a little, so you cast your thoughts back to look over the last few days. How incredibly fortunate you had been to be home with Daniel when the email dropped, and how he'd saved you from the lowest point you'd ever reached in your life; you shudder to think where you'd be now, had you been on the other side of the world, surrounded by strangers. How you'd regained yourself when you'd realized just who else was on the list of recipients, and how frantically you'd called all of them in turn, pleading with them not to start taking action until you'd gone down to confirm it. 

Beauregard had been the hardest to talk down. Of course he had, he thought his only child had been murdered by magical monsters or their hunters or the government or a centuries-old wizard. He was ready to empty his coffers hiring every private military group he could get ahold of to raze Baltimore in retribution. She wouldn't have wanted that, though, and that had been the fulcrum you'd used to convince him to, if nothing else, let you go on a fact-finding mission before he let slip the best dogs of war money could buy. 

And then, with things stabilized for the moment, you'd sat down and watched every video file in that private server. And then again. And then, again. And by the end of your third full viewing, a feeling had settled into your bones. There had been a constant message in the dossier cum diary. Unstated, except in the first one, but always implied. That regardless of who exactly did it, whether the monsters for not being strong enough, whether the Ravens for defying their rules, whether the DHEA for being on the wrong side of their laws, whether the man she'd shared her bed with for standing in the way of his machinations: whoever it was that took her out, leave nothing of them standing. And you knew, down to your core, that she meant those words for you, specifically. She wanted you to burn the world down around her corpse, and she knew you'd do it without a second thought. 

So you'd sat your husband down and told him what you had to do. You'd expected him to fight you on it, but he told you, gentle as can be, that he'd be there when you got back. That gentleness was gone when, after you'd gathered your go-bag and were lacing up your shoes, he'd seized you by the arm and ordered you, crying, shouting, not to let the people who took his best friend from him pass without suffering. 

(You'd kill them all twice over for making him hurt like that.)

It hadn't been hard to find them once you got to Baltimore. Between the hard work of a seasoned P.I., your years of experience finding and tracking targets, and your (as you're now coming to understand) supernatural tendency to do just the right thing at just the right time, you'd found yourself on their doorstep not even a day after you'd landed. And  _ lord _ but they were all exactly as she described them. Sylvester, worn out but keeping a fire in his eyes. Thomas, shouty and sensitive and far too earnest under the bluster. Grahm, weedy but self-confident in a way that tells you he's earned it (you're still going to break his nose). Jörgen, kind and trusting and unafraid and unsure of himself and quietly nursing a deep, terrible loss that no one would ever be able to understand properly; easy to like and possessed of a personal rhythm just as easy to get swept up in. Blake, principled and focused and equal parts sharp-as-a-tack and dense-as-a-dead-star and self-serious until the moment he wasn't and his beautiful, undying, childlike wonder at the world shone through; the kind of man you could just as easily watch cartoons with as follow into war. (You'd briefly wondered where the man she only ever referred to with skateboard tricks was, but you had bigger fish to fry). 

You had about vomited with relief when they told you she was alive, and you had told them about the email, and then it had been a whirlwind. Using the afterlife as a shortcut to a graveyard where Thomas sobbed openly over losing his father (you're kicking yourself now, for being so caught up into your own rage to even offer words of condolences). Your first real fight, rushing through the corridors of a hospital, dodging a too-big-to-be-real man and grappling with a too-strong-to-be-human senior and trading gunfire with too many government soldiers (hey, you think at her, now I  _ have _ had to kill people, and I'd do it again a thousand times to have you here, safe). Discovering her double, clambering into a van on sheer dumb luck, executing a man from so close you could (can still) smell the pink mist that escaped his helmet. The drive back here, ushering everyone out to cover what she's still kinda sensitive about, even though, as little as you really know the others, you know none of them would think any less of her for them. And then the trip through her mind to learn what had happened to her, which… You're still unpacking that (you're still sick to your stomach from it (how dare he HOW DARE HE)). 

And now, here you are, one and a half midnight, on the cold floor of a makeshift hospital room, scrubbing out the cylinders of a pretty little six-shooter you brought back here because you can't stand to be away from her for more than five minutes unless it's to kill the ones who made her like this. 

It's hours still till dawn and you settle in, alone but for the gentle sound of her breathing, and you're 29 and honestly it's the most soothing sound you've heard in your life. 


	2. Two Bros, Chillin In An Infirmary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Give someone an excuse to talk about what's worrying them, even obliquely, and they'll seize on it.

You've always had a weirdly good sense for the passage of time, so you know without checking it's just after two when soft footsteps pad into the infirmary. You don't look up as they dwell in the threshold; you will, you suppose, get enough of a warning if they try something that you can fight back. Plus, the inside of this deagle’s magazine well isn't going to q-tip itself. You're not surprised when they finally enter the room; you  _ are _ surprised when they set a rather sizable mug of coffee next to your knee. 

"It's black, I dunno how you take it." 

Ah. You weren't quite sure who you expected, but you suppose Blake was higher on the list than most (top of the list was Jörgen; he's so much the type to fret himself sleepless over someone that's in a bad way, it's kind of adorable).

"It's fine, thanks." 

He settles onto the small couch you're leaned back against, and you swallow down a mouthful, the heat and bitterness doing as much to liven you up now as the caffeine will later. You both sit in silence for a while. It's not amicable, you don't know each other well enough for that (though you have him at a disadvantage there, by proxy you know him much better than you've earned), but it isn't awkward, either. Just, quiet, the two of you sipping coffee at two in the morning in a cold basement. You're content to leave it that way until he breaks the silence. 

"Can't sleep?" 

"Nah. Too wound up from… Everything." you reply, gesturing vaguely at the world around you. 

"Mm" 

Another few minutes of quiet sipping and scrubbing pass before you return the courtesy. 

"You?" 

He's quiet for a few minutes more, and you can hear him scratching the back of his neck and rubbing his feet together. You think he might've taken your question as rhetorical, until he answers with the same bald-faced conviction he always does when he's stating something he thinks should be a given. 

"That was real fucked up, what we saw in there." 

You bristle, and you're sure he can see it; two hours has not been long enough for you to deal with it. 

"Honestly it's kinda fuckin me up," he continues. "I've got all these important memories of hers stuck in my head now, I'm never going to be able to forget them, but I know they're all edited because that's not how the case we worked together went, and I'm worried it's gonna fuck up how I act around Amber when she wakes up." 

You will yourself to calm down. It's not as severe as it is with you, it couldn't possibly be, but he's hurt, too, from seeing an important moment they shared get twisted like that. You take a long breath before asking, "And?". 

"Look, I know it's a lot of real personal stuff, but I'd really like to have the real story. It's gonna drive me nuts until I hear how it actually happened." 

"Seriously?" 

"Just the parts you were there for, yeah." 

You sigh, suddenly feeling incredibly tired but unwilling to turn in (unwilling to deny her friend, the man who's saved her life more than once, some peace of mind). You slide the magazine back into its well, lock it, re-engage the slide, choke down the rest of your coffee, and lift the gun and the mug over and behind your head. 

"Fill this back up and get me the Winchester out of the armory." 

He takes them both from you, and you get up to shake the stiffness from your legs. You take the few minutes he's out to walk up to her cot and re-check the bandages you put around her arms and fiddle with her hair (what you wouldn't give to have her wake up, sneering at you and calling you a creep for watching her sleep). You're back in front of the couch when he pads back in, of course; you have an image to protect. 

"Okay, so."


	3. The First Fifteen Weeks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Meet cute", but like, sarcastically

You're 18 and it's the first day of your first college class and you're sitting front and center in an auditorium built for 100 because it's never too early to start making the professors who could write your grad school recommendations somewhere down the line remember your face. It's less than a minute before the turn of the hour when she slides into the seat next to you: too blonde, too peppy, cutting it too close to the start of class. You're not sure why, it's really not a big deal, objectively speaking, but it rubs you the wrong way. 

The lecture starts, the syllabus is reviewed, and the professor starts going over some basic concepts. It's Bio 101, you expect you'll already know a quarter of it from high school, and you're not phased when the professor throws the class a softball question on what the elemental makeup of a human body is. It's less higher education and more trivial pursuit. Heck, if you felt like being a smartass you could recite a 'technically correct' answer from an anime you saw a few years ago. 

A hand shoots up next to you and  _ fuck _ but you cannot stop yourself from rolling your eyes. This is college, raising your hand isn't necessary anymore. You cannot let this stand, she  _ has _ to know better. And if she doesn't, well, she's about to. 

The professor has stopped speaking to wait for an answer, and as she turns away from the board you belt out,

"By mass, the average adult human is 65% oxygen, 18.5% carbon, 9.5% hydrogen, 3.2% nitrogen, 1.5% calcium, 1% phosphorus, and less than 1% each of potassium, sulfur, sodium, chlorine, magnesium, and other trace elements" 

Her hand slams into her desk beside you, and you only barely school your face into neutral. You can  _ feel _ her boring holes into the side of your head as the professor agrees and returns to the board. You pray she's learned her lesson, and you're (bizarrely) disappointed when her hand comes up for the next question, and the two after that, and you bulldoze her every time. It's the fifth question when she finally fucking gets it, and you can practically hear how red-faced and frustrated she is when she starts answering immediately after a question is asked. You feel (again, bizarrely) satisfied at the whole thing. Of course, now you're realizing that the hand raising was the only thing holding her back, and you can't get a word in edgewise anymore. It leaves something under your skin feeling (again, again, bizarrely) itchy, and you're sitting up a little straighter and racking your brain a little harder to get one over on her now that you're both playing by the same rules. 

You don't, for the entire rest of class. It drives you up the wall. You're thrilled in a way you don't have the words to express properly. 

Something in your stomach knots when, next class, with 5 minutes until it starts and the seats half full, she slides in next to you again. Something on the back of your neck gets incredibly hot when, the class after, she's in her seat before you’re even in the room, and she somehow knows you've arrived and turns to look at you, face perfectly neutral except for an ever-so-slightly raised eyebrow. 

The first midterm rolls around and you guess she's done coasting, because she pulls a C- and you a B+. You could swear you hear her growl, and you don't look directly at her or say anything. You could also swear she goes home and memorizes the entire textbook, because midterm two comes and goes and your steady B+ is met with a fucking 102%. You try to keep cool (she'll swear, later, you were white-knuckling the desk all day, but fuck her she's a liar) and decide to yourself that this will not stand. You go back to your dorm and by the time the final rolls around you've read every word in the book twice (you'll email your professor over break to find out your grade; you won't know how to feel about the 100% except twisty). 

You two never speak directly to each other, never exchange numbers or emails, though you do catch her name at some point, and fuck if "Amber Williams" isn't a cosmically perfect name for her. No human being could devise a name that so effortlessly encapsulates someone who pisses you off in the exact way she does. 

You feel really weird all day after you have that thought. 

The end of the semester comes, and as you both leave the room, splitting up in the halls, still not having said a word to each other, something in you twists in a way that almost makes you sick. You feel hollow, you can barely focus on your next final, and that night you pray, actually pray, that you haven't seen the last of her. 

(You don't tell Blake about the prayer. You don't tell anyone about the prayer, not even her, not ever.) 


	4. The Following Eighty Nine Weeks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Fortune smiles on a pair of idiots, to the chagrin of an entire academic department.

You almost stop being an atheist when, next semester, you find out you two are in the same major and have not one, but all four classes together. Half of them you sit next to each other again, the other half you take opposite corners, all unspoken arrangements. You settle into your patterns again like you've been doing it all your life. Racing to answer questions first, studying your heart out to pull nothing but A's, throwing yourself into projects and papers so she never has an excuse to look smug at you. 

Some of the other students pick up on it. The instructors all definitely do. None of them understand it, and frankly neither do you; you have nothing to offer your friends when they question you but shrugs and "it's complicated"s. You just know that you're 19 and your guts are burning and someone's turned the saturation up on the world. 

Whatever rules there are between you two are either unspoken or just in your head, but she's the first to break one. You're offering your interpretation of some early Rococo paintings when she roars from the back that you're wrong, challenges you, directly, specifically, on your thoughts, on the grounds that you're failing to account for certain socioeconomic factors in the artists' lives. You turn, physically turn, in your seat, and challenge back, damn near shouting facts about Watteau's upbringing at the literal opposite corner of the classroom. Someone wolf whistles. You both tell them to fuck off. You're both asked to step outside until you can control yourselves. You spend the rest of the hour trying to stare each other down. Her face is smug and her hands are trembling. You're numb from the neck down and lightheaded. 

You decide, a week later, that if talking is on the table now, you refuse to shy away from it. A quiz is handed back, and you meander over to her desk with a sudden case of cottonmouth. You desperately school your face into neutral and ask, "Well?". 

She turns over her 100%. You show her the same. You want her against a wall. 

You start having proper conversations after that. Half the time they're polite, amicable, and absolutely dripping with unspoken tension. The other half the time it's nothing but bickering, hectoring, borderline bullying. The new dimension to your… whatever this is (you refuse to even think the word "relationship" because what kind of fucked up relationship is this) has cooled off everything else that you already had going with each other. You aren't racing quite so hard to answer first or studying quite so thoroughly, but you can feel yourself getting back there. It's like you transferred boiling water into a much bigger pot and have to let it get roiling again. It feels good to let some of the pressure off for a bit, but you know it's only a matter of time before your next in-class shouting match and you cannot fucking wait. 

You're an endless source of both entertainment and embarrassment for your shockingly mutual set of friends. She gets a pixie cut one day on a whim and everyone can tell she's dissatisfied with it, but when you tell her it looks awful she sneers back and swears to keep it until you apologize for your rudeness and everyone rolls their eyes fondly. You both use your friends as in-betweens to coordinate classes; you both think you're being subtle about it; you're both incredibly obvious; you always have all your classes together. You go to parties and spend the whole time outdoing each other at every party game you can get to. Even after things have wound down and it's just 6 people in a house, shooting the shit and playing dominoes and passing blunts around a patio hearth, you're both in every game and one of you is always the winner. You don't go on dates, because dates don't consist of splitting up in an arcade and crushing every high score on every machine until one of you is in first on all of them. Someone calls you two cute. You continue to tell them to fuck off. (You will realize, a few years down the line, that the kinds of looks you threw each other when you crossed in the isles were not appropriate for public spaces.) 

And you're 19, then 20, and summer vacations are the most miserable months of your life. 


	5. Three Word Phrases

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Carelessness begets ruin begets euphoria.

You say it first. It's just the two of you, you're in your third year, studying for a midterm in a little room on the fourth floor of the library you reserved for five hours. You're both making headway, though the teasing and little challenges never stop for more than a minute until they do, dragging out into both the most charged and most comfortable six minutes of silence you've ever lived and you aren't even really thinking when you say, 

"God I hate you so much" 

She stands like something bit her, and for the first time in a year and a half you can't read her face at all. You're too stunned by that look to say anything as she crams her stuff in her bag, no regard for crumpling papers or loose pencils or open books, and she's out the door before your brain starts working again. 

She stops looking you in the eye. She stops talking to you, stops answering questions in class, changes seats so she's nowhere near you. Her grades suffer, and so do yours, you're not sleeping anymore and barely eating because every time something hits your stomach you throw it up. The equilibrium of the entire department is thrown off, from the freshmen to the faculty, because you two as 'you two' have been a constant since Day One and now there is no 'you two' and no one knows why, especially not you. You start skipping class, because even being in the same space as her is too much, you're considering dropping out because you  _ just  _ **_can't_ ** anymore. 

You're at the end of your rope when she corners you in the dorms one evening, and under her eyes are awful bags and in them is a beautiful fire and you right about cry because it's the first time they've met yours in a month. And she seizes you by the jacket and hauls you into the closest wall and leans in to your ear and growls, low and burning and terrifying and  _ wicked, _

" **I.** **_Hate._ ** **You.** "

And suddenly you understand why you couldn't read her face before, because you have no context for what your heart, your stomach, every cell in your body is doing in response her saying those words in that voice. And you tremble and sink to the ground and weep, loudly, because you're 21 and you don't understand yourself and she's back,  _ she's back _ ,  **_she's back_ ** . 

(You don't tell Blake about the crying. Amber doesn't tell anyone about the crying, either, when she tells the story. That's something for just the two of you.) 

Senior year comes and goes, and despite the hiccup in your junior year you graduate Magna and she graduates Summa, because she somehow fit some extra on-campus volunteer work in her schedule and you will never forgive her and she will never let you live it down. The bastard phrase that once nearly destroyed you is now traded easily, sometimes fondly, more often as a curse. A part of you compares it to how your friends say "I love you" to their partners, but the rest of you rejects the comparison, because you refuse to believe that love sears your skin off like hot pitch and compels you to aggravate your other as often and as powerfully as possible. No, you're not in love, you're in hate, and the first time you say that to a friend where she can hear it her eyes sparkle in a way that tells you she agrees. 

Grad school is discussed long before graduation, and you've both been accepted to the same place on the same curriculum, because you both refuse to let the other get away. The friends you've been dragging along through this typhoon break apart, some going straight to work, others to other grad schools, and still others aren't quite sure what they want to do yet. 

But the two of you? You're inseparable. You're 22 and you understand yourself now and you'd say you'd follow each other into Hell, but it's more like you'd both sprint straight in, because neither of you could stand the other getting there first. 


	6. Conversation and Action

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maybe not safe, maybe not sane, but definitely highly consensual.

It's during the summer between undergrad and grad school that everything changes again. Your honors have netted the both of you offers for internships, with high likelihoods of job offers at the end. Everyone is clamoring for you two, including the holy grail of animal medicine: the Steinman Internship. That name on a resume functions as a skeleton key for the industry, and it's always a fight to get in. It's everything you've dreamed of since middle school. There's just one problem: it's unpaid, and in a part of the country that's pretty expensive to live in. 

It's not a secret in your circle that you come from kind of a poor background. You don't make any bones about how thoroughly your parents scrimped and saved to pay for your tuition, and how you still had to take out loans to pay for food and housing and books. It's only by virtue of the grants and scholarships your honors are netting you that you're attending grad school at all. You're not ashamed of your circumstances, it's just a fact of your life, but it does limit your opportunities sometimes. 

Amber, on the other hand, is rolling in it. She's not just from money, she's from old money, the kind that'll never run out short of some true disaster. She also doesn't make any bones about her circumstances and she never seems to hesitate to just throw money at problems if it's a viable solution. It got to the point where, at one Christmas party, you had to pull her aside and explain (in the most condescending, sarcastic way possible) that it was a bit of a faux pas to give each of her friends a huge fuckoff television at what was supposed to be a small gift exchange. She toned it down pretty quick after that. You don't resent her for her privileges, nor do you envy them in any real way, but you very much envy the opportunities they afford her. 

So when the Steinman offers come in, and after the immediate excitement dies down and reality rears its ugly head, you quietly make a decision: Amber will take the Steinman, and you will take the Reesefield: smaller, less prestigious, but it pays in a way you can live on. You'll harass each other over Skype over the summer months and rejoin in the fall. It's incredibly simple, and you don't have a problem with it (you absolutely have a problem with it, the thought of being separated like that keeps you up at night). 

It comes up one weekend in your little circle, your collective plans for the summer, and as the conversation going around the table comes to you, you tell them you intend to take the Reesefield. Amber is out of her chair before you finish your sentence. For a moment you're back in junior year and your heart clenches in fear, but it abates when you realize that, this time, you don't have any trouble reading her: the shock and anger on her face are plain as day. It's a pretty good look on her, you wish you could put a photo of it in your wallet (you call yourself a creep as soon as the thought ends). She whirls around the table and  _ hauls _ you from your chair and into the kitchen. You catch, briefly, your friends whispering to each other and collecting their things, but it's hard to parse over your wrist being crushed and your face nearly merging with a doorjam; they'll tell you later that they all decided to leave and get pho, because they did not want to be present for whatever was about to happen. 

Amber pushes you up against a counter and glares daggers into you, up in your face demanding, 

"What the fuck are you talking about, you're taking the Reesefield?" 

You sigh and roll your eyes, you'd half expected this reaction and you'd half rehearsed your response to it:

"Look, Amber," you start with a casual lean back and a dismissive wave, "not all of us are made of money, we can't all spend a summer in an expensive part of the country with no income source, and Steinman's a full-time job with zero pay."

She takes a half a step back as you continue, "This is how it is in the real world, people take the opportunities they can afford, not the ones they want. You take the Steinman, it's fine, but fuck off with giving me shit over doing what I have to do to survive." 

She takes another half step back and looks away, and you'd think she's ashamed if you didn't recognize the exact way her eyes narrow and her hand covers her mouth. She's thinking, muttering quietly enough to herself that you can't catch any of it, and you're fine to let her work it out. She blinks, after a minute, her eyes go wide, and she turns back to you with a look that says she's pissed off at you for missing the obvious answer. 

"No, fuck you, you're taking the Steinman and I'm paying your living expenses." 

That. You'd expected a few different responses but that certainly wasn't one of them. 

"You can't be serious," you start, straightening up off the counter. 

"No, fuck that and fuck you," she's almost yelling now, jabbing a finger into your chest, her face is red and shit, those might be the starts of tears in the corners of her eyes, "I am not letting you weasel your way out of this! I won't allow you to fall behind! I! Refuse! To give you the excuse of a missed opportunity when I finally make you admit I'm better than you! That's going to happen because I, in fact,  _ am _ better than you, and for no other reason, and I won't accept you throwing up your hands and allowing yourself to be anything but your best over something as stupid as rent money, you understand?!"

The gears in your brain have slipped out of alignment and you're floundering for a response. You hadn't once considered this possibility and you can't make yourself accept it. She takes her hand off your chest as you try to reboot yourself, slightly smug but no less fiery and furious. 

"And you know what? Fuck you, also, again, I'm clearing your student loans, because I'm not allowing you to take some rinkadink 9 to 5 to pay them off while I'm out there setting the world on fire." 

That brings you back into the waking world and something swells and burns in your chest. You're boiling and black as pitch for this woman, you can't stand the flippancy with which she says things like that and you're furious at the condescension in her eyes over you not having found this answer yourself and your bones are vibrating at the thought of her destroying anything that could possibly stand in the way of you walking shoulder to shoulder with her. You hate her with every fiber of your being and you aren't thinking when you grab her by the shoulders and slam your lips against hers with enough force to chip teeth. 

It only lasts a moment before your brain catches up with you and you pull back as fast as you can. Your eyes are wide and hers are too and she touches her lips and whispers, "Shit."

And you start stammering, "Jesus, Amber, I", an apology forming, when she grabs you by the collar with panic and revelation on her face and angrily repeats " _ Shit"  _ and yanks you inward for a kiss that's more teeth than it is lips and tongues and you're more euphoric than you've ever been in your life and you're incredibly thankful the others left when she starts walking the two of you backwards to the nearest bedroom. The sex is violent and frantic and beautiful and leaves you both covered in bruises and scratches. You throw everything you've felt for her the last four years at her skin, and she at yours, and you wonder, briefly, if this is ruining you for regular sex, because you can't imagine doing it any other way. 

The morning after you mutually call what you'll later refer to as The First Kayfabe. You both agree to put aside the antagonism and seriously hash out what your relationship (yes, you're using the word now) is, agree on boundaries, devise safewords (including Kayfabe), and talk honestly and openly about how you feel about each other. It's nice, talking about all of it so frankly is a catharsis you hadn't known you'd needed, but eventually you start itching to get back into it, and it's not even noon before Kayfabe is called off and you're back at each other's throats (literally, now, as well as figuratively). 

Things cool off for a while the same way they did when you first started talking, the both of you slowing down a bit to grow into this new dimension. You're treating this like a real relationship now, and like all relationships, it isn't perfect. It isn't that you're falling prey to the sorts of petty arguments that plague regular couples; or rather, you are, but you both acknowledge with wry smiles that they're a feature of your relationship rather than a bug. No, the problem is that you don't have a cultural guidebook for what a healthy hate-based romance looks like like everyone else does for love-based ones, you're charting new territory, and that means missteps. You make each other safeword far too often and accidentally cross lines that result in genuine tears and Kayfabe is called more times in the next four months than in all the years that follow combined. But you both want it too much to give up on it, and despite the blur of the Steinman Internship, you've got each other pretty well figured out by the time summer is over and you're back to classes. 

You make new friends and they acclimate slowly to your pitch overtures and PDA (public displays of antipathy, you both say in unison, mischief in your eyes). The pattern of academia is like breathing to you now, since it's where your relationship was founded, and the second day isn't even over by the time you're back to hollering at each other in the middle of class over your differing opinions and making your professors understand why your letters of recommendation came with warnings about 'unique chemistry'. 

And you're nearly 23 and you're happy in a way no one seems to really understand but her and it's fine, because she's just as happy in just the same way. 


	7. The Introduction of a Balancing Force

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Occasionally, a third wheel is the perfect addition to a vehicle.

It's nine weeks into the first semester of grad school and you don't know what to do with yourself. There's a student in the photography department who's unbearably handsome and he makes you laugh so easily and always seems to be there when you're stressed out. Your heart flutters when he smiles at you and your stomach flips when he says your name and you think you're falling in love and you're terrified. You're 23 and you don't understand yourself again and you don't know what this means about you and you don't know what it's going to mean for the pitch relationship that's stronger than it ever has been. 

You try to tamp down on it, but it isn't too long before your new circle has gathered for dinner and drinks and the one person who still doesn't really  _ get _ what you and Amber have going asks about the photography boy you're making mooneyes at, and you're  _ just _ tipsy enough that you don't deny it. The rest of the table goes quiet as you're cajoled into talking about him, and when you can finally stomach looking across the table at her you find you can't read her face at all and you're stone cold sober all of a sudden. She stays unreadable as you garble out that you don't intend to ask him out, you don't even know if he's into guys and you don't know if he's single and really there's no way he's into you. Your internal panic keeps rising until she narrows her eyes and her mouth spreads into a disgustingly smug grin and she leans forward, laying the Texan accent on extra thick, and drawls out "Wow James, I din'n know you were such a  _ fuckin coward. _ " 

And your blood is already starting to boil at the sound of her favorite pet name for you, and you're about to clap back when she continues, 

"I mean really, a cute boy makes you lunch and talks to you all night when you're stressing over exams and you're  _ seriously  _ hemming and hawwing over whether he's into you? Like Jesus Christ I know you're a little slow but I raised you better than that, swear to God he'll bring you a bouquet of roses and you'll think he wants to discuss his new hobby in flower arrangement. What the fuck happened in your childhood to make you this oblivious, seriously, I'm dying to know."

And now your blood is ice cold because this isn't how she talks, she's putting it on, and finally you can read the small trembling in her hands and the uncertainty in her eyes. She's scared too, terrified of what this means and she has no idea how to handle it. So you do the only thing you can think to do: in a public restaurant, surrounded by friends, you reach across the table and take her hand and call, gently, "Kayfabe". 

The dozen sentences of invective rambling she's been winding up die in her mouth, instead replaced with a quiet nod and a hopeful look. No one at the table has heard either of you call that before, but they can all read how you both melt a little at it and they all sigh in relief. The dinner doesn't return to how it was, everyone is still a little agitated, especially you two, and you all break with subdued 'g'night's and 'later's. The two of you walk back to the dorms in silence, holding hands like normal people for the first time since you met. You make tea, take some deep breaths, and get to work. 

You're up most of the night figuring this out with each other. Both of you are scared sick of falling apart over this, and you make it clear in every way you can that you wouldn't sacrifice what you have with her for anything, that what you feel for him is so completely different from what you feel for her that one won't,  _ can't,  _ damage the other. She's fine with anything, she insists, so long as she doesn't lose you. The hours drag on and understanding builds and you both agree to try it out and both agree that if it messes things up you'll drop it and won't look back. And relief fills the room and you both lose your words and still have so many feelings to get out and you throw yourselves at each other, it's desperate and tearful and you mark each other from head to toe to say 'this is mine and I'm not letting it go'. 

Morning comes and you're both confident you can do this. Kayfabe isn't called off for days as you figure out what to say to him, and soon enough you're in Daniel's dorm telling him you're really into him and you'd like to date him and also you're in a relationship. He asks you to tell him about it, and laughs as you try your best to explain it properly to another person for the first time. He doesn't get it, not really, but it doesn't sound anything like what he wants with you, so he doesn't see why there should be a conflict. You nearly cry when you kiss him. 

He asks to meet her, and Kayfabe still isn't called off so your first meeting is easy, and they gel like they've known each other their whole lives. You think, privately, that it's almost a shame Daniel's gay, because the way they bounce off each other is some written-in-the-stars shit. Your heart sings at the sight, your ears ring at her calling him a metamour, and Kayfabe is called off soon after. 

You expect things between you and Amber (you can't just say "you two" anymore) to cool off a bit like they always do when a new dimension is added, but it's just the opposite. The contrast of your love for Daniel makes you hate her all the hotter, and she absolutely revels in it. It's wonderful, intoxicating, until you push each other a little too hard in front of him and he has to leave, genuinely upset. The three of you reconvene, Kayfabe called, and agree that the worst of your vitriol will be held back around him. It's a compromise you're both more than willing to make. 

The contrast works in the other direction, too, and you find yourself loving him harder and faster than you thought you were capable of. He feeds on it, returns it in full, and your friends can't understand it. It's too soon, they tell you, but a week after graduation you propose to him, and she's there as an ironic hypeman (you'd both agreed, ages ago, that marriage didn't feel right for what you had). He says yes, and preparations start, including The Great Kayfabe (you laugh in her face when she calls it that). It's four days long, each of you spending a full day paired off with the third left alone to think, and all of you come back together on the fourth day. The time is spent bonding, hashing out every lingering concern and ironing out every wrinkle. Boundaries are reestablished, affirmations flow freely, and you honestly feel like you're gearing up to wed them both. Something happens between the two of them on their day together, something they've never offered to explain to you and you've never wanted to ask about, but they come back with a light in their eyes you still don't understand and a dimension to their relationship you can feel but can't put words to, only that the way they talk to and touch each other isn't something you'd seen before or since and they don't call each other metamours anymore. 

The wedding comes and Kayfabe isn't called, and you're grateful because she's the perfect outlet for your jitters and this day wouldn't be complete if there wasn't a tack in your shoe, her best manning in an obnoxiously red suit, leaning slightly against your back, snickering quietly at her vandalization of the notecards you'd written your vows on, so vulgar it completely breaks your flow and forces you to improv (and if you're honest with yourself, they were better for it). 

The three of you retire to the hotel, she one room over, and you and your husband have an amazing first night together until he's suddenly exasperated, pounding on the wall between your rooms and hollering for her to get her bony ass in here. She does, and they spend the rest of the night and most of the following day breaking you down into your constituent parts and putting you back together again over and over and over. And you're 24 and married and overwhelmed by two people who care about you in diametrically opposed ways that somehow blend together perfectly in this moment, and you promise yourself you'll do anything to keep this together.


	8. Make Your Own Way

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An extremely dumb series of ideas somehow pan out perfectly.

It's three weeks before graduation and even though you and Amber have gotten more job offers than you know what to do with, nothing has grabbed either of you in a way that makes you want to commit. Daniel's accepted a job at NatGeo as a photographer and is worried for the both of you. You're both spinning your wheels and it's affecting your grades and you can't stand it. 

The three of you are gathered in your dorm when it hits. She's been bouncing a tennis ball off the ceiling (she doesn't give a fuck if she marks up your walls) in silent contemplation for the better part of an hour when she stills and hums thoughtfully and says, "Okay, come with me on a journey here". 

On reflex you return, "No, never," without looking up from your papers, and she spikes the ball into the back of your head. Daniel, the traitor, collects it and returns it to her. 

"Journeys do not require talking, James!" You wave dismissively over your shoulder for her to continue. 

"Okay, so, what if, instead of working for one organization, we work for all of them?"

You spin your chair halfway around and fix her with the 'are you fucking kidding me, Williams?' look you've been refining for years. You hold her gaze until she fidgets and demands, "Well??", and you drawl back, "Does the journey require talking now?". 

She tries to spike the ball between your eyes this time, but you catch it and throw it back between hers without so much as blinking (internally you flip the fuck out over how smooth that was, you'll be proud of it forever). 

She rubs at the mark it left and fires back, "I'm serious, what do you think?" 

"I think," you say, turning to face her fully, "that I don't know what the hell you're talking about." 

She rolls her eyes so hard her whole head comes along for the ride, answering back, "Think about it, stupid. Everyone wants us! I'm the best animal handler in the world, and you're… an acceptable second," you start to argue but she powers through, "so instead of throwing in with one organization, we take single-job commissions from all of them! We make them bid on our services, fight each other for our expertise, we get experience and contacts the world over and we'll never be bored because it'll constantly be something new!"

She's a little out of breath by the time she's done, and you don't answer right away, instead electing to lean all the way back in your chair and stare at the ceiling in thought. It's actually a pretty appealing idea: you've always wanted to see the world and this'd get other people to front your airfare, you'd definitely never be bored, and once you got established enough you could essentially pick your own hours, dictate your own schedule. There is, of course, another angle, one she didn't state but definitely expects you to pick up on: if you market yourselves separately, become each other's professional competition, the beautiful little pitch rivalry you have going can continue out of academia and into the working world. You'd see less of each other, sure, and that'd be hard, but you're plenty clever and she has more enthusiasm than sense, you could make it work.

You're about to come back down to earth when you discover that Daniel,  _ the traitor _ , gave her the ball back again at some point, and suddenly you're choking on your own throat as it connects with your Adam's apple. You cough and splutter and glare at her and she's unbearably smug, like she already knows your answer, and  _ fuck _ you hate this girl with all your heart. You catch your breath and give your assent for the plan, and she whoops and Daniel suggests celebratory burgers, and you slip hotsauce onto his for his treason, and then bring him enough milk to drown it because he's the love of your life (Amber is unreasonably confident he's going to say yes when you pop the question next month, and you're scared to death). 

It's only a week later when you offer a modification to the plan, and you kinda can't get enough of the disbelief on her face. 

"Vlogging???" 

"Alright, try and keep up here," you smirk down at her, "our field is pretty under-served, and we're essentially inventing a new career. What better way to get our names out to the wider world and inspire future generations than to film our work and post it? I guarantee people will be clamoring to see the world's best animal handler and his good-enough tagalong (she swats at your arm). Plus it's nearly-free publicity for whoever we're working with, they'll eat it up." 

Naturally there's yet another unspoken angle, and you know she can see it immediately. Publicly hosting videos of your work lets you watch each other during your downtime, giving you more direct fuel for your rivalry and ammunition to use when you're face to face again. It'll be difficult to get it established at first, not a lot to governments will be on-board right away, but you've tempered Amber's richgirl entitlement into a charismatic enough force that you know she'll get the ball rolling, and you'll be right there to snatch it from her. 

It goes back and forth like that for a while. Vlogging turns to streaming, you two now also competing for site hits and subscriptions and donations. Daniel coordinates with the magazine to be on-site with one of you as often as possible. The wedding comes and goes, and the three of you buy a small house in Colorado to come back to when you're worn out or need some real time together (Amber's worse about that than you and Daniel, she has a bad habit of throwing herself into a project to the exclusion of everything else that you haven't yet broken her of; more than once you'll find yourself flying out to some southeast Asian swamp to literally drag her back to the states because you're wound up and can tell she is too). It's hard sometimes, there's lots of lonely nights, and the first day back with one of them is always an affair of desperate reconnection, but all three of you love your lives and wouldn't live them any other way.


	9. Skin That Shines Like Jewelry

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first of many deep wounds and the first of many long nights treating them.

It's six months into the first year of your work when she gets really badly hurt the first time. Things are working out better than any of you anticipated. The conservation agencies are right about lining up around the block for the both of you, and the streaming has found an audience you honestly didn't think existed and only seems to be growing. You, in particular, have acquired a strange notoriety for nerves of steel and daring provocations of dangerous animals. You don't really think anything of it, you just always have a good feeling for when one of those stunts will work out just fine. 

You've just wrapped up a job in eastern Canada when you get the call: she's laid up in a hospital in South Africa. She'd been redirecting a pack of wild boars when she got too close and pissed off one of the males. Its tusks were unusually long and unusually straight and one went straight through her abdomen. She's alive, no critical organ damage, but only because one of her escorts had had the presence of mind to charge in and blow its brains out the second it got her. 

You call Daniel immediately, but you know it'll take days for him to even start moving because he's out in the ass-end of Antarctica and you don't have days. You're on a plane before the day is out and you're in a cold sweat through all 18 hours of your flight. It takes too long to get from the airport to the hospital and you are just barely not screaming at the staff when they delay you even for a second in getting to her room. 

She's awake when you finally get in to see her, lying on her back, face blank, hands in the air above her head, opening and closing rhythmically. You don't know what nonsense is going through her head, but you crack your knuckles and prepare to disabuse her of it. 

"What the actual hell did you think you were doing out there?" you ask, vitriol turned down to a 3, and pull up a chair next to her cot. The lights come back on behind her eyes as she lowers her arms. 

"Fuck off," she croaks out, "you do dumb shit like that all the time." 

"Yeah, sure, and I'm stronger and faster and more careful than you, so I can get away with it. Way I hear it you just threw yourself in front of them like you expected your guardian angel to part the sea of pork around you." 

There's a short puff of air out her nose and a small smile, which you take as the best laugh you're going to get with the pain she's probably in. She closes her eyes and you sit in silence for a while, long enough to make you think she's fallen asleep, when she says, "This changes nothing, I'm not quitting." 

The determination you've always admired her for is plain in her voice, and you marvel at how seeing her like this doesn't change your feelings for her at all. 

"I wouldn't recognize you if you did." 

She smiles at that, wide and genuine, before falling into a short coughing fit. You mutter something about getting her some water and stand, but you don't get far before she's tugging on your sleeve. You half turn back to her, your face schooled into neutral, and listen as she whispers the quietest "Kayfabe" you've ever heard. You don't let your face change as you sit back down. It's always been your way to let whoever called it speak first, so you sit in silence as she finds her words. 

"The doctors couldn't close the hole up properly, too much flesh was lost so they had to cauterize and stitch and staple it all shut around the inside. They did the best they could, but I saw it the last time they changed my bandages, it's super gross and the hole's about as wide as a finger and goes all the way through, and by the time I'm well enough to get moved back to the states it'll be too well-healed to fix without months of surgery and recovery, and," and you tune out a little because you can tell she's circling around it and you can see right through to what 'it' is. 

For all the stuff about herself she's proud and confident of, her looks have never been one of them. She's slight and bony and made of sharp angles, and she can't put on any weight no matter how hard she tries. She knows she isn't the type you'd usually go for, and you haven't been able to convince her that the physical side of your weird little hatemance doesn't play by usual rules, that nothing she's worried about is a factor for you. So far neither words nor actions have made her understand that the context of your relationship changes everything, including attraction; that you hate her all the more for her harsh angles and visible ribs, that it drives you wild how easily you can throw her across a room when the mood strikes you, that the fact that her wiry muscles seem to channel her hate into enough strength to overpower you when she gets going makes you swoon in the worst way. More than once you've wished she could read your mind, crawl inside your head and see how exactly perfect she is to you through your eyes.

And now, here she is, grievously wounded, and instead of focusing on her recovery she's worried that some gnarled hole is her side will be the final straw for you. You come back into the present and listen to how wound up she's getting herself and wish she hadn't called Kayfabe, because you long to shut her down and tell her what a fucking idiot she's being right now. But she has, so instead you stand and cut off the tirade with the softest kiss you've ever given her and give her her words right back, 

"This changes nothing, I'm not quitting." 

And she's quiet for a moment before the tears come in earnest, and you're 26 and you wonder if this is the tightest anyone's ever held you. 

And it isn't that night, or the night after, or any of the nights for the next month, but one night, when she's back up to full and it's just the two of you, you take her to bed and you give each other scars, permanent ones, marks of mutual ownership and, from your side, unfading acceptance. 

(You don't tell Blake and Jörgen about those scars. They're not for them to know about. 

You also don't tell them about the second time she gets hurt, and how the long, wide gashes across her chest from a wounded bear bring all her insecurities back. And you don't tell them about the third time, or the tenth, or how you all eventually stop keeping count, or how she stops wearing shorts and short sleeves, even in summer, because of how people look at her, or how sometimes soft kisses and strong words aren't enough and the only way you can quiet her mind is to steal her from the hospital to the closest hotel and fuck her through the mattress until she can't think anymore and the sheets are ruined by the blood from her still-closing wounds. 

You do, however, tell them that you did eventually get her to understand, and that it didn't take her becoming a telepath to do it. 

Jörgen's "awwwww" makes you laugh.) 


	10. Thoughts Are At Their Most Dangerous In Quiet Spaces

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Returning to the present day, we find context for a bad attitude.

It's 5:30 now and you've stopped talking, the stories they saw versions of yesterday and then some told in full. Jörgen had wandered in at some point, a beer in his hand and a concerned look on his face, and had settled in without a word; probably a Norse thing, you’d guess, sitting around telling each other long stories like this. You're on the last gun of the armory now, a sleek MP5, and that's good because both your hands and your throat are worn out. You keep expecting to look up and find her awake, because she hasn't failed to wake up at just this time in nearly a decade, but she's still out cold, and that makes everything hurt all the more. 

The men sitting behind you have gone quiet too, and you're fine to let them lie. If there's anything you know about Blake it's that he'll have something to say before long. And he doesn't disappoint, throwing out a, "So let me get this straight". You let Jörgen's "Hm?" stand in for your own. 

"You said you knew Morgan was bad news the day you met him, right? And that you warned Amber about him back in November? You said that, right?" You can hear the anger and incredulity in his voice, you know where this is going and you don't like it so you don't answer. 

"So then you come back and find out she's made some kind of deal with him and you leave!? You expect me to believe she's  _ that  _ important to you but when you find out she's basically made a deal with the devil you  **_walk out and don't come back until you find out she's dead!?_ ** "

Jörgen's, "Now, hold on" is the only answer he gets, because the shame burning under your skin has sown your mouth shut. You can't bear to explain it to them. 

To tell them that, when you first met her here in Baltimore, you'd drank yourself stupid because you were terrified she'd well and truly left you behind. Gone into a world of killing and magic and endless fights with unspeakable monsters that you couldn't follow her into, because it scared you and because you'd have to take Daniel in with you to follow, and you couldn't do that. To tell them that the thing you now know is standing behind you screamed into your ear when you shook Morgan's hand, screamed visions of uncountable deaths and thousands of miles of burned land and a world forever changed for the worse and the suffering, lonely demise of your oldest companion and you were so scared of the thought that you'd already been pushed into this new world without knowing it, that you'd have to play some part in those visions, that you ignored it all. To tell them how deeply it hurt you to find out that she had weighed his offer of power and her own pain against your warning and all your history together and found that history lacking, found your warning worthless before another step deeper into her new life in the arms of a man she'd known less than a year and who you  _ knew _ was a monster, in every way someone could be a monster. To tell them that you'd fled the city to drink yourself stupid again and forced yourself to believe that she'd be fine, that she knew that world better than you did (better than you knew her, now). To tell them that you lied to Daniel about what'd become of her, that his dearest friend wasn't teetering on the edge of a pit you couldn't see the bottom of, risking her life every day, because you knew he'd chase after her and pull you with him, and you were just too  _ scared  _ to go where she had gone. 

To tell them that you, down to your core, were a coward, like she'd been calling you for years. 

To tell them that you hated yourself, platonically, dangerously, for what you'd let yourself become and what you'd let become of her. 

To tell them that your hate for Morgan was dwarfed by your hate for yourself, and that that hate and the shame it bred were powering you now more than anything else. 

You can't bear to tell them any of that. You can't bear to say anything, so you don't. Instead, you slam the pieces of the gun together and leave the infirmary without looking at any of the other three people in there, returning the gun to its rack and heading upstairs. It's only minutes until first light now, and you have a shower to take and food to put in your stomach and some phone calls to make and a monster to track down and make suffer. Because you're 29 and there's nothing left in you but rage and self-loathing, and while you can't stand yourself anymore, you have the perfect target to take it out on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you read through all of this, please know that I am extremely and eternally grateful. Thank you, thank you, and good day.


End file.
